What's New in View Manager 4.0

VMware View Manager 4.0 includes the following new features:

VMware View with PCoIP – PCoIP provides an optimized desktop experience for the delivery of the entire desktop environment including applications, images, audio, and video content for a wide range of users on the LAN or across the WAN. PCoIP can compensate for an increase in latency or a reduction in bandwidth, to ensure that end users can remain productive regardless of network conditions.

PCoIP includes VMware View Display with support for up to four monitors and the ability to deliver the optimal resolution and pivot orientation to each monitor independently.

VMware vSphere Support – VMware vSphere 4 support enables improved virtual machine scalability, performance, and management, with continued support for VMware Infrastructure 3.x.

Enhanced single sign-on – The Log in as current user feature is integrated with Active Directory and smart cards to help simplify the process of logging in to a VMware View desktop.

Restricted entitlements – Administrators can control user access to virtual desktops based on the View Connection Server being used for authentication.

General Installation Guidelines

The following guidelines apply to all installation types (new
installations and upgrades).

Install vSphere 4 Update 1 or VMware Infrastructure 3 version 3.5 Update 3 or above –Install vSphere 4 Update 1 or VMware Infrastructure 3 version 3.5 Update 3 or above if you want to use View Composer. Note: If you want to use the Offline Desktop experimental feature, VMware Infrastructure 3.5 Update 3 or above is required. Offline Desktop is not supported with vSphere 4.

When upgrading, strictly follow the recommendations in the upgrade guide for the vSphere or VMware Infrastructure version you are using.

View Client with Offline Desktop is an experimental feature. Install View Client with Offline Desktop if you want to use Offline Desktop.

View Client with Offline Desktop cannot be installed on the same machine as VMware Workstation, VMware ACE, VMware Player, or VMware Server.

View Client, View Client with Offline Desktop, and View Agent cannot be installed on the same machine.

Synchronize time – Use the VMware Tools time synchronization function to ensure that virtual machines are synchronized to ESX. ESX must synchronize to an external NTP source, for example, the same time source as Active Directory. For additional information, see Timekeeping in VMware Virtual
Machines information guide.

Before creating an automatically provisioned desktop pool,
do the following:

Validate the vCenter guest customization
specification if you intend to use one – Make sure that the
guest customization specifications in vCenter are accurate. You
should use vCenter to deploy and customize a virtual machine from your
template using that customization specification and fully test the
resulting virtual machine (in other words, DHCP, authentication) before using that
customization specification in View Administrator.

Validate network ports on ESX – Make sure you
have a sufficient number of ports on the virtual switch which is used
for the guest virtual machines. The default value for ESX is 24, which might not
be sufficient when creating a large pool of desktop virtual machines.

View does not support using link-local (169.254.x.x)
addresses for virtual desktops –
Configure virtual desktops to use DHCP or static IP addresses.

View supports smart cards and smart card readers that use a PKCS#11 or Microsoft CryptoAPI provider.

Known Issues

Installation

Do not attempt to install, uninstall, or repair the View Agent within a View session.

If the system locale (set in Control Panel > Regional and Language options > Advanced > Language for non-Unicode programs) does not match the language of the version of Windows that you are using, installation of the View Connection Server does not respond.Workaround: Make sure that the system locale matches the language of the version of Windows that you are using.

Upgrade

If you are upgrading from View Composer 1.0, when a prompt asks whether you want the wizard to upgrade the database, you must respond that you do want the wizard to upgrade the database. If you select manual upgrade, it will fail. If you are upgrading from View Composer 1.1, no database schema upgrade is required.

During vSphere upgrade, the administrator might choose to upgrade the virtual machine hardware to version 7 in the Parent VM. This can trigger a Windows Vista or Windows 7 reactivation prompt when View desktops are recomposed.

If you upgrade View Client for Windows from the Beta or RC version, you might see the error Internal Error 28014. When you click OK, you might see an additional error Error 28030. The installer failed to install the USB driver. To ensure successful installation, please restart your machine and relaunch the installer.Workaround: Restart the client system and then upgrade View Client.

If you attempt to upgrade View Client from the Beta or RC version through View Portal, you will see the error Internal Error 28014. When you click OK, you will see an additional error Error 28053 A DLL failed to register. Please see the most recent %temp%vminst Log for more details.
An error indicates that the installation did not complete successfully. A prompt to install an Active X Control also appears in the toolbar.Workaround: You must uninstall the Beta or RC version of View Client before installing the GA version.

View Administrator

When editing a desktop pool that is not in vSphere mode, vSphere mode is not enabled by changing the Hosts and Clusters selection to a standalone ESX 4.0 host.

If you press the F5 key to refresh the page while configuring a desktop pool, a Java error might be displayed.Workaround: Do not press F5 to refresh the page. If the error appears, you must close all active Web browser instances and then restart them.

An authentication error is displayed if a non-ASCII value for the external URL is entered when configuring a View Server in View Administrator.Workaround: Use only ASCII characters in the View Server External URL.

View Client

View Client supports connections to View desktops using PCoIP. The following are known limitations when using PCoIP:

View clients that use PCoIP can connect to View security servers, but PCoIP sessions with the desktop ignore the security server. PCoIP uses UDP for streaming audio and video. Security servers support only TCP.

Smart cards are not supported.

Virtual Printing is not supported.

Audio input works with USB devices only.

View Portal does not support PCoIP connections.

If you connect to a Windows 7 desktop using PCoIP, autofit does not work.

When View Client attempts to connect to a Windows 7 desktop using PCoIP, a blank black screen will appear instead of the Windows Security dialog box if the Windows 7 desktop fails to perform single sign-on, for example, if the desktop does not join the domain.Workaround: Make sure that you enter a valid user name, password, and domain name in the View Client connection dialog box. When using single sign-on, you do not have to re-enter authentication information to log in to the desktop.
Once connected, if the Windows Security dialog box is activated in the desktop, a blank screen is displayed. To dismiss the dialog box, press Esc. You can also attempt to type in the correct authentication information, but you cannot see what you are entering.

If you connect to a Vista desktop using RDP, but then switch to PCoIP, a blank black screen will appear and then the session will end. This problem only occurs if single sign-on fails.Workaround: The administrator must correctly set up single sign-on. Make sure that single sign-on was enabled during the View Agent installation. Verify that the remote desktop is joined to the same Active Directory domain as the credentials used to log in to the View Connection Server instance.

The user will see a blank black screen and then the session will end if three conditions occur simultaneously: the remote desktop is running Windows XP SP3, the remote desktop is not joined to an Active Directory domain, and the user reconnects to the same desktop using PCoIP after disconnecting and logging off from the RDP connection.

When connected to a desktop using PCoIP and playing a video without using MMR, audio might lag behind video.

MMR does not work if a machine is moved from a workgroup to a domain after the View Agent is installed.
Workaround: You must reregister the required MMR DLLs.
On a Windows Vista machine, you can use a batch file that contains the following commands:"%SystemRoot%\system32\regsvr32" "%CommonProgramFiles%\VMware\Wyse TCX MMR Server\WMRVFilter.dll""%SystemRoot%\system32\regsvr32" "%CommonProgramFiles%\VMware\Wyse TCX MMR Server\WMRVVideoMFT.dll""%SystemRoot%\system32\regsvr32" "%CommonProgramFiles%\VMware\Wyse TCX MMR Server\WMRVMediaSource.dll"

On a Windows XP machine, you can use a batch file that contains the following commands:"%SystemRoot%\system32\regsvr32" "%CommonProgramFiles%\VMware\Wyse TCX MMR Server\WMRVFilter.dll" "%SystemRoot%\system32\regsvr32" "%CommonProgramFiles%\VMware\Wyse TCX MMR Server\WMRVAudioDMO.dll" "%SystemRoot%\system32\regsvr32" "%CommonProgramFiles%\VMware\Wyse TCX MMR Server\WMRVVideoDMO.dll"

When playing a video using MMR in a Vista desktop, if Windows Media Player is switched to full screen mode you cannot exit full screen mode until the video finishes playing.

When connected to a desktop using PCoIP, if you connect a projector or external monitor to a laptop computer,
multi-media redirection (MMR) does not play properly.
Sometimes it displays only a black box.

When connected to a desktop using PCoIP, if you connect to an integrated USB camera on the client computer and
then disconnect the camera, on the next login request the desktop
attempts to connect to the IP address of the USB camera, resulting in the error
This desktop has no desktop sources available.Workaround: Reboot the desktop.

When connected to a desktop using PCoIP, multiple monitor display does not take effect, or functions poorly,
when the leftmost or topmost display is not the primary monitor. For instance, the desktop might be centered across two physical monitors.
Also, video might play on the second monitor instead of
inside Windows Media Player on the primary monitor.Workaround: Always designate the left or top monitor as the primary monitor.

When a View Client user is logged in to a guest virtual machine,
the vSphere Client (or VI Client) Console view displays a blank screen.
Do not type or mouse-click within the Console, because doing so disrupts the user.
Do not leave the virtual machine Console view active,
because a Console view during an active PCoIP session can affect user experience
and has the potential to consume additional network bandwidth. Workaround: Set vSphere role-based privileges to restrict
access to the Console and reduce the chance of this occurring.

When connecting to a Windows 7 desktop using PCoIP, it might take a long time for the connection to complete.

The first connection to a Windows 7 desktop using PCoIP might immediately disconnect after login. If you connect to a Windows 7 desktop using RDP and then switch to using PCoIP, that might also cause View Client to disconnect. If you double-click in the launched desktop in full screen mode after switching from RDP to PCoIP, that might also cause View Client to disconnect.

When connected to Windows Vista desktops using PCoIP, if the guest system goes into Sleep mode,
the virtual machine puts the guest into Stand by mode,
causing the connection to hang and new connection attempts to fail.Workaround: Use Vista's Power Options dialog box to disable Sleep mode.

If a Windows XP guest is put into Stand by mode,
the View Client desktop does not close immediately, and might not close.Workaround: Avoid using Stand by mode.

When using PCoIP, disable Auto-detect video settings
in the video card settings when you create the virtual machine to use as the template
or Parent VM for provisioning a desktop pool using the vSphere Client.
Otherwise, View cannot set the correct video parameters,
and multiple monitor mode fails during provisioning.

On Windows Vista systems running View Client, the guest desktop user can access
a USB device that is in use on the client system if no locking mechanism is in place.
Notepad does not lock a file, whereas Word does.

If you try to connect to an NLA-enabled Vista machine from an NLA-enabled Windows XP client,
the connection fails with the error message An authentication error has occurred
(Code: 0x80090303). Remote Computer: <IP.Address>.
The same error occurs if you try to connect directly with RDP to the NLA-enabled Vista machine. Workaround: You can connect from Windows Vista clients.

If you are running View Client on Windows Vista build 6.0.6000, you might encounter the following problems:

It is not possible to add a printer in the Control Panel.

If you try to connect to a desktop using RDP, View Client hangs. The system log will include the error An internal communication error occurred. Redirected printing will no longer function for a single user session. Check the status of the Terminal Services Device Redirector in the System folder of Device Manager.

If View Client is started from the command line using a command such as wswc.exe -serverURL <IP.Address> -domainName <domain_name>, the user is prompted for a user name and password. If the user waits about 15 seconds and then clicks Cancel, the wswc.exe process remains running until another View Client is launched interactively or from the command line.Workaround: Manually stop the wswc.exe process.

View Client fails to connect to the View security server if a standard server FQDN with localized characters is specified during security server installation.Workaround: Specify the IP address of the standard server during security server installation.

View Client for Windows supports connections to desktops using the HP RGS protocol. View Portal does not support RGS connections. Linux thin clients do not support RGS connections. Additionally:

Only direct connections are supported. Tunnel connections are not supported.

Smart cards are not supported.

Multiple monitors are not supported.

When you are connected to a desktop using the HP RGS protocol, if you right-click a file, folder, or network connection, you might see a red screen and repeated Network connection warning errors. This problem occurs if you right-click an item to select that item and the following settings are turned on:

Smart Card

If a user removes their smart card while they are logged in, the View desktop exits as expected.
However, on busy Windows Vista desktops, the following informational message might be delayed for one or two minutes:
Your smart card was removed, so you have been logged out of the View Connection Server.

Offline Desktop (Experimental)

When you install the View Agent with the Offline Desktop component selected,
the installer includes VMCI files (such as vsocklib.dll)
even if VMware Tools has already installed them.
This could result in a version mismatch or an older version being installed.Workaround: If you previously installed VMware Tools on the virtual machine, deselect Offline Desktop Components when installing the View Agent.

If you attempt to perform an offline operation that requires re-authentication when the View Connection Server is configured to display a pre-login message, open windows might close though the View Client process is still running in the background. Workaround: End the View Client process (wswc.exe) in Task Manager and then restart View Client. If the network connection is lost and then comes back when running a local desktop, restart View Client before initiating an offline operation.
This problem does not occur if you do not configure the View Connection Server to display a pre-login message.

View Composer

On rare occasion, you might see an error such as: Virtual Machine Message msg.disk.duplicateUUID : Virtual disks "<diskname_1>.vmdk" and "<diskname>.vmdk" have the same UUID...This message appears in vCenter when the virtual machine is powering on. You can see the full message in the console.
This error indicates that disks with the same UUID were created during a refresh or recompose operation. However, the message only appears after a refresh or a recompose to the same snapshot. The root cause of this disk duplication is that the UUID is out of sync between vCenter and View. This causes the duplicate virtual disk to be created and leaves the the virtual machine booting to the original, incorrect disk.
Workaround: VMware recommends that you delete the virtual machine and provision a new one.
Alternatively, you can delete the original disk and delta disk (.vmdk) files and rename the "_1" files to the names of the files you deleted (remove the "_1"). You must also edit the virtual machine configuration (.vmx) file and remove lines with references to the "_1" .vmdk files.

If a user data disk runs out of disk space when a persistent linked clone desktop pool is created, recomposed, or refreshed, an error message is displayed: View composer agent initialization state error(20) failed to redirect profiles directory (waited 35 secs). Workaround: Make the user data disk larger to accommodate the default and All Users profiles in the Parent VM. The minimum size of 128MB might not be sufficient.

Do not recompose a linked clone from Windows XP to Windows Vista.
If the virtual machine contains a large amount of user profile data,
the user data disk might not be large enough to hold both Vista-style \users\*
and XP-style DocumentsandSettings\username user profiles.

vSphere optimizes virtual machine cloning by using the SCSI data mover extended-copy feature.
However, a side effect of this optimization is that linked clone pool provisioning
can be slowed down by concurrent full cloning tasks. Workaround: Do not concurrently provision a linked clone pool and a large full clone pool
if the two pools are on the same SCSI array, sharing the same data mover.
Similarly, do not configure a linked clone pool to share a SCSI array
with a full clone pool that uses the delete-desktop-after-logoff policy.

When you create an automated pool of 100 or more desktops,
View Composer does not warn you to limit the prefix name to 12 characters.
In an automated pool, desktop names can be no longer than 15 characters,
including the prefix name and the autogenerated number.
For example, if you create an automated pool with a 13-character prefix
and set the maximum pool size higher than 100 desktops,
View Connection Server cannot provision more than 99 desktops.Workaround: When you create an automated pool of 100-999 desktops, limit the prefix to 12 characters.
When you create a pool of 1,000 or more desktops, limit the prefix to 11 characters.

Linked clones that use BusLogic controllers might become unusable
when recomposed to a base image that uses an LSI Logic controller.
Linked clones affected by this issue are unable to boot their operating systems,
and the administration interface shows errors such as:
View Composer agent initialization state error (-1):
Illegal state (waited 360 seconds).
There is no workaround. Changing SCSI type during a recompose is not a supported operation.

If the connection to the database is lost during linked clone operations (including linked clone creation, resynchronization, and destruction), View Composer might crash. View Composer will attempt to restart automatically, causing another crash which is logged as a Service cannot be started exception in the Windows event log.Workaround: Restart the database server if it is not running. Then restart the View Composer service from the Windows Services control panel.

Miscellaneous

If you use Proxy Auto Configuration (PAC) for proxy server detection (HTTP or file URL formats), View Client fails to connect to the View Connection Server with a Broker request brokerConnect error.
If you are using the PAC file URL format (file://c:/proxy.pac), View Portal fails to connect to the View Connection Server with a WinHttpGetProxyForUrl error.Workaround: View Client does not support PAC proxy server detection.
If you are using View Portal, you can connect successfully using the PAC HTTP URL format (http://<serverIP>/proxy.pac).

The first attempt to connect to a desktop that is powered off might fail with the error The connection to the remote computer ended. This can occur when the RDP port has been changed.Workaround: Subsequent connections will succeed.

When connecting to a desktop using PCoIP, the keyboard locale in the desktop keeps its original setting when the keyboard locale in the client operating system is Japanese.

On a View Connection Server instance,
when you run Set View Connection Server Log Levels
and select log level 0. Reset to installation defaults,
the system prints a permission denied error while setting Log4j level to default.Workaround:
You can ignore this error. The log level is set to the default (Debug) anyway.

Resolved Issues

Smart card readers were not filtered when a device class was added to USB filtering, so they appeared in the device redirection list when you edited the registry value to filter other devices.

Desktops connected from View Client version 3.1 could not connect to local USB devices if the View Connection Server was version 2.x or 3.0, unless the View Agent was upgraded to version 3.1 or higher.

During linked clone creation, the Desktop Sources tab in View Administrator gave an incorrect error status after provisioning and customization.